While computers have dramatically altered many aspects of modern life, pen and paper have prevailed in the hospitality industry, e.g., for restaurant ordering, reservations and wait-list management, because of their simplicity, ease of training and operational speed. For example, ordering prepared foods has historically been done verbally, either directly to a waiter or over the telephone, whereupon the placed order is recorded on paper by the recipient or instantly filled.
Although not previously adapted for wide-scale use in the hospitality industry, various forms of digital wireless communication devices are in common use, e.g., digital wireless messengers and pagers. Also in common use are portable laptop and handheld devices. However, user-friendly information management and communication capability not requiring extensive computer expertise has not heretofore been available for use in everyday life such as for restaurant ordering, reservations and wait-list management. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on personal digital assistant (“PDA”) development seeking to produce a small, light-weight and inexpensive device that could be adapted to such uses; yet none have yielded a satisfactory solution.
One of the inherent shortcomings of PDA type devices is that, as they strive for small size, low weight and low cost, they must compromise the size and clarity of the operator display medium interface itself, which in most cases is one of a variety of LCD (liquid crystal display) type devices. As the size of the display shrinks, the amount of information that may be displayed at any one point or time is commensurately decreased, typically requiring multiple screens and displays to display information to the operator. This reduces the overall utility of the device. Additionally, the smaller display and keyboard results in a non-optimal operator interface, which slows down operation and is thus unacceptable for the time criticality of ordering, reservation and wait-list management and other similar applications. This necessitates many design compromises which in the aggregate have resulted in limited acceptance of PDA type devices in the restaurant and hospitality fields.
Many of the negatives prevalent in earlier devices have been eliminated, but, to date, there is still no integrated solution to the ordering/waitlist/reservation problem discussed above. With the advent of the Palm® and other handheld wireless devices, however, the efforts to make such devices ubiquitous have begun to bear fruit at least in some areas, e.g., personal calendars. However, substantial use of such devices in the restaurant and hospitality context has not occurred to date. As discussed above, at least one of the reasons PDAs have not been quickly assimilated into the restaurant and hospitality industries is that their small display sizes are not readily amenable to display of menus as they are commonly printed on paper or displayed on, e.g., large, color desktop computer screens. Another reason is that software for fully realizing the potential for wireless handheld computing devices has not previously been available. Such features would include fast and automatic synchronization between a central database and multiple handheld devices, synchronization and communication between a World Wide Web (“Web”) server and multiple handheld devices, a well-defined application program interface (“API”) that enables third parties such as point of sale (“POS”) companies, affinity program companies and internet content providers to fully integrate with computerized hospitality applications, real-time communication over the internet with direct connections or regular modem dialup connections and support for batch processing that can be done periodically throughout the day to keep multiple sites in synch with the central database. A single point of entry for all hospitality applications to communicate with one another wirelessly has also previously been unavailable. Such a single point of entry would work to keep all wireless handheld devices and linked Web sites in synch with the backoffice server (central database) so that the different components are in equilibrium at any given time and an overall consistency is achieved. For example, a reservation made online would be automatically communicated to the backoffice server and then synchronized with all the wireless handheld devices wirelessly. Similarly, changes made on any of the wireless handheld devices would be reflected instantaneously on the backoffice server, Web pages and the other handheld devices.
For the foregoing reasons, paper-based ordering, waitlist and reservations management have persisted in the face of widespread computerization in practically all areas of commerce. At most, computerization of these functions has been largely limited to fixed computer solutions, i.e., desktop or mainframe, because of the problems heretofore faced in configuring wireless handheld devices and maintaining database synchronization for such applications. Specifically, the unavailability of any simple technique for creating restaurant menus and the like for use in a limited display area wireless handheld device or that is compatible with ordering over the internet has prevented widespread adoption of computerization in the hospitality industry. Without a viable solution for this problem, organizations have not made the efforts or investments to establish automated interfaces to handheld and Web site menus and ordering options.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide an improved information management and synchronous communications system and method which facilitates user-friendly and efficient generation of computerized menus for restaurants and other applications that utilize equipment with non-PC-standard graphical formats, display sizes and/or applications.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an improved information management and synchronous communications system and method which provides for entry, management and communication of information from the operator as well as to and from another computer, Web page menu, remote digital device using a standard hardwired connection, the internet or a wireless link.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an improved information management and synchronous communications system which is small, affordable and lightweight yet incorporates a user-friendly operator interface and displays menus in a readily comprehensible format.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a synchronous information management and communications system which enables automatic updating of both wireless and internet menu systems when a new menu item is added, modified or deleted from any element of the system.